How to Make a Tumbling Acrobat

I am fascinated by these tumbling acrobats and wanted to make one for a long time. Unfortunately, I could not find detailed, practical information on how to build one. So I set out and tried to figure it out by myself. It took a very long time and a real lot of patience but finally I could make several acrobats. I created this article to help serious people who want to build such a toy.

Before I start saying anything, I must emphasize the marvelous work of Barry Falkner (Banofalk) who worked out the theory of these acrobats. I am very grateful for his video and his work. Without him I could not have been able to make my acrobats. His video and design was a major help and I must say that every time I deviated from his plans, I failed. Therefore, my first and most profound advise is to try to stick to his plans as much as possible if you want to be successful. And I am going to use his pictures as the basis of my description and only add some extra practical information. He was a genius in figuring out the theory and design of the acrobat. Besides Barry's I could not find any other description of how to make a Type 1 figure.

Later, I looked more into the Internet and I found that actually the German handmade toy, named The Acrobat is the only acrobat of this kind on the net. I contacted Barry and he said he made his plans based on this German acrobat but still his plans are not the exact plans of the German figure. And sometimes you can see similar German made antic acrobats. But there are only a very few of these around. So, as of now, not much more information, picture or video can be found on the Net.

When one sets out to make a mechanism like this acrobat the most important questions are like what materials to use and what to do if my acrobat doesn't do such and such thing or why does it do something which it is not supposed to do. I'll try to answer exactly these practical questions.

After making 14 acrobats, I still don't exactly dare to say I know how to make one. None of them worked right at the first attempts. I had to struggle with every single one and find ways and tricks to make them work. Even though they all looked alike, they didn't behave the same. And I must realize that there is always some chance, too, involved in the dropping movement. There is a chance, something that can't be calculated nor seen beforehand. So even the best acrobat fails sometimes. And, yes, there are better and less perfect acrobats. They all can do the somersault, but some misses a turn here or there more than the other. Maybe I could have improved them even more but there had to be a limit when I said, he is good enough now.